Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society - current issue

Online Resources

2009-07-01

Editorial Statement

2009-06-30

Spatial circuits of global finance

Garretsen, H., Kitson, M., Martin, R. — 2009-06-30

Monetary geography before the Industrial Revolution

Flandreau, M., Galimard, C., Jobst, C., Nogues-Marco, P. — 2009-06-30

In this article, we study Europe's monetary geography on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. Our unit of analysis is the city and we explore inter-city linkages. Important findings include a considerable degree of integration and multilateralism with monetary centres having already emerged as vehicles for international settlements, before the Industrial Revolution.

Global banking and local markets: a national perspective

Alessandrini, P., Presbitero, A. F., Zazzaro, A. — 2009-06-30

In the early 1990s, a widely shared opinion among scholars and practitioners was that the importance of physical proximity between banks and borrowers would be doomed to decrease drastically over time and, put in extreme terms, the end of banking geography would become a real possibility. However, the empirical evidence shows the continued importance of local credit markets for small borrowers and local economic development. In this paper, we selectively review the literature on the real effects of bank consolidation and produce new evidence on the role of headquarter-to-branch functional distance on relationship lending.

Financial centre bias in primary equity markets

Wojcik, D. — 2009-06-30

This paper shows that firms from financial centres are more likely to go public than their provincial counterparts. The financial centre bias is analysed for 32 countries, including the European Union, the USA and Japan. It is particularly strong in countries with underdeveloped stock markets and closed corporate governance regimes, but it is still present in countries with the most developed stock markets and most open corporate governance, such as the UK and the USA. Potential reasons for the bias include the benefits of issuers’ proximity to Initial Public Offerings intermediaries and specialised labour markets, corporate governance incentives and institutional factors.

International capital mobility: linking the Feldstein-Horioka puzzle to the trade and equity home bias puzzles

Kool, C. J. M., Keijzer, L. M. — 2009-06-30

We revisit the Feldstein–Horioka (FH) puzzle using data for 23 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries for the period 1973–2003. We document a sharp decline in the FH coefficient from the mid-1990s onward, supporting the hypothesis of increased economic and financial integration. Subsequently, we extend the literature and use a non-linear specification with interaction terms to empirically show that observed decreases in equity home bias (EHB) and increases in trade openness are structurally linked to the time variation in the FH coefficient. Thus, this paper empirically establishes a structural link between three puzzles in international macroeconomics and finance: the FH puzzle, the EHB puzzle and the trade home bias puzzle.

Financial liberalization and the geography of poverty

Arestis, P., Caner, A. — 2009-06-30

We investigate the possibility of further channels through which financial liberalization policies might affect poverty and discuss how various factors have produced varying outcomes in different countries. The growth channel is the only one widely accepted in the literature. We suggest that three further channels should be added to the list: the financial crises channel, the access to credit and financial services channel and the income share of labour channel. We discuss how these channels operate differently in different countries. As far as we know, no attempt has been made previously in the literature to go beyond the growth channel.

The geography of finance: after the storm

O'Brien, R., Keith, A. — 2009-06-30

This article reviews the idea that geography is becoming less and less important in finance as a result of the revolution in information and communications technology and of deregulation, in the aftermath of the economic and financial crisis of 2008. Reviewing four scenarios for the future of finance, it seems likely that the drive towards ‘the end of geography’ will be slowed by the crisis, as the wisdom of allowing the marketplace to self-regulate is reconsidered. Future information and communication technology developments may help improve information management, combating one of the features of recent market failure.

The global financial customer and the spatiality of exclusion after the 'end of geography'

Dymski, G. A. — 2009-06-30

This paper evaluates O'Brien's assertion that freer global financial flows and movement will eliminate the significance of geography for financial processes because enhanced global choice will create the global financial customer. We argue here, contra O'Brien, that expanded global choice in finance has contributed to the widening global income/wealth divide, both in the global North and the global South. Financial globalization has not made geography immaterial: instead, spatial location, informed by each area's historical and institutional background, continues to demarcate who has access to which financial services at what price. The US subprime crisis demonstrates dramatically that vulnerability to economically devastating financial crises varies dramatically across space at the national and sub-national levels.

A very geographical crisis: the making and breaking of the 2007-2008 financial crisis

French, S., Leyshon, A., Thrift, N. — 2009-06-30

The paper argues that the origins of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 can ultimately be located in four spaces: in international financial centres, in particular, in the longstanding competition that has existed between London and New York; in the insularity of the everyday geographies of money that have emerged in such centres in the wake of the apparent hegemony of financialization; in the geographical recycling of surpluses and deficits and, more particularly, the structural dependency that has grown up between China and the USA, and, finally; in the growing power of the financial media, centred in international financial centres and an increasingly significant agent in performing money and the economy in general, and in engendering mimetic forms of rationality.

Financial stability, the Basel Process and the new geography of regulation

Bieri, D. S. — 2009-06-30

The post-Bretton Woods era has witnessed the integration of the global financial system at an unprecedented pace. However, much of its institutional governance structure remains hinged on the old paradigm of national economies. Despite highly globalized financial markets, I find evidence of substantial clustering in the context of regional financial activity. Addressing the regulatory challenges of globalization, the so-called ‘Basel Process’ provides policy makers with a unique institutional arrangement that straddles the gap between the old and the new geographies of financial markets. The evolving architecture of the global financial system calls for a careful balancing of globally co-ordinated, locally decentralized regulation on the one hand and effective, centralized intervention mechanisms on the other hand.